From the Cooper-Hewitt press release:

The Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum will celebrate outstanding achievement in design this fall with its 10th annual National Design Awards program. Today, Cooper-Hewitt Director Paul Warwick Thompson announced the winners and finalists of the 2009 National Design Awards, which recognize excellence across a variety of disciplines. The Award recipients will be honored at a gala dinner Oct. 22 at Cipriani in New York.

“This year’s winners reflect the design climate of the times,” said Thompson. “We are in an era that demands public commitment and work that strives for change and the responsible use of resources. The public impact of the daily work of the nominees demonstrates the far-reaching effect of design innovation in every sector.”

The 2009 National Design Awards nominations were solicited from a committee of more than 2,500 designers, educators, journalists, cultural figures and corporate leaders from every state in the nation. Nominees must have at least seven years of experience in order to be nominated, and winners are selected based on the level of excellence, innovation and public impact of their body of work. This year’s jury—a diverse group of former National Design Award winners convened by Cooper-Hewitt—reviewed the nominations and chose Lifetime Achievement and Design Mind recipients, and selected winners and finalists in the Corporate Achievement, Architecture Design, Communication Design, Fashion Design, Interaction Design, Interior Design, Landscape Design and Product Design categories. This year the new Interaction Design category was added to the Awards, celebrating exceptional work using digital technology.

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The recipient of the Landscape Design Award, which is presented for work in urban planning or park and garden design, is Hood Design. Hood Design was established by Walter Hood in 1992, in Oakland, Calif. The firm is committed to issues that address the re-construction of urban landscapes within towns and cities. Hood Design’s approach is multidimensional, exploring the role of specific landscape typologies and topologies that together reinforce and re-make landscapes that are specific to place and people. Hood is a professor and former chair of the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning program at the University of California, Berkeley. His area of teaching and research, American urban landscape history and design, is intertwined with office practice creating a didactic approach to projects. Hood’s projects include the landscape for the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, and Poplar Street, a green boulevard in the heart of downtown Macon, Ga.

Finalists in the Landscape Design category are Andrea Cochran, principal of Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture in San Francisco; and Rios Clementi Hale Studios, also California-based, dedicated to an interdisciplinary design approach.

The Sculpture Garden at the de Young Museum, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, CA; Hood Design, landscape architects.

LAEP News – April 30, 2009

http://www.ced.berkeley.edu/events/news/laep/hood-design-wins-cooper-hewitt

Walter Hood, FAAR

Mr. Hood is Professor and former Chair of the Landscape Architecture Department at the University of California, Berkeley, and principal of Hood Design in Oakland, CA. Hood has worked in a variety of settings including architecture, urban design, community planning, environmental art, and research. He was a fellow at the American Academy in Rome in Landscape Architecture, 1997 and has exhibited and lectured on his professional projects and theoretical works nationally and abroad. His work was recently featured in the exhibition and publication, “Open” New Designs For Public Spaces, Van Allen Institute, NY, The New York Times, Metropolis and Dwell magazines. His firm designed the gardens and landscape for the new De Young Museum, San Francisco with Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron. Hood’s published monographs: Urban Diaries and Blues & Jazz Landscape Improvisations illuminate his unique approach to the design of urban landscapes. These works won an ASLA Research award in 1996. His essay “Macon Memories” is featured in Sites of Memory, Princeton Press, 2001. Hood participated in the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art’s “Revelatory Landscapes” Exhibition 2000-2001. He is currently researching and writing a book entitled Urban Landscapes: American Landscape Typologies. His area of teaching, the American Urban Landscape, is intertwined with his design work creating a didactic approach to the design of urban landscapes.